What Tri-County Residents Want in a Neighborhood

Between November 16 and December 13, 2012, DHM Research conducted a survey of 3,799 members of the Opt-In panel about regional housing priorities. A link to the full results from the survey can be found here. We started by providing participants with a list of neighborhood attributes and asked them to select their three most important when deciding on an area to live, given their current economic situation.

The chart below shows the results broken out by Tri-County area (Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas Counties)*:

A few notable findings:

Multnomah County participants were most likely to cite walking distance to public transportation (41%), walking distance to a park or natural area (36%), and pedestrian and bicycle amenities (36%) as the most important neighborhood attributes for them when deciding on an area to live.

Washington and Clackamas County residents both selected walking distance to a park or natural area (45% and 42%, respectively) and quality public schools (41% and 40%, respectively) as the most important neighborhood attributes for them when deciding on an area to live.

Multnomah County participants (41%) were nearly twice as likely to cite walking distance to public transportation than those from Washington (24%) and Clackamas Counties (22%).

Washington and Clackamas County participants (41% and 40%, respectively) were twice as likely to cite quality public schools as participants from Multnomah County (21%).